Elizabeth Barton (1506 - ) a prophetess also known as the Maid or Nun of Kent.
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
Rafe brings Cromwell the details. She is down at Canterbury. She claims to have visions, she goes into trances, she can cure the sick. “She claims she can raise the dead.” Warham says “she is a blessed young woman” with a gift. Bishop Fisher has visited her, as well as the Cournteys.
Week 11: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 2) / Early Mass
On the king’s progress to Dover and Calais, he stops at Canterbury. There, he decides to show himself to the people. He walks among the crowds and encounters the Holy Maid. She tells him that the “heretics around you must be put into the fire” and “if you enter into a form of marriage with this unworthy woman, you will not reign seven months.”
‘Come, made, seven months? Round it off, can you not? What sort of prophet says “seven months”?’
She also sees Henry’s “lady mother surrounded by pale fires’ and warns him that he will be struck by lightning. It is then that Norfolk explodes and raises his fist.
Afterwards, Cromwell attempts to hire the Maid to locate the cardinal in the afterlife. In this way, he learns of Barton’s handlers: Father Bocking and Father Risby.
Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)
Cranmer questions Elizabeth Barton. Her visions contradict one another. She is overconfident, she thinks he is another Warham. “She is a mouse under the cat’s paw.”
Week 14: Devil’s Spit / A Painter’s Eye
She is brought into London, where the Cromwell women watch over her. They interview her at Lambeth Palace and she sticks to her story. She predicts their deaths within six months. All heretics. She tells them the devil came to her in her room and spat on her.
But she caves under pressure. She confesses she is a fraud and makes a public confession at St Paul’s Cross. “He feels that she will take to the role of fraud, with the same relish with which she took to her role as saint.”
Week 15: Supremacy
Cromwell visits Barton in the Tower. She says she has seen a throne of bones in hell ready for the king. Cromwell suggests her plead her belly and say she is pregnant. “I would advise anyone to get a few more weeks of life, by any means they can.” But Barton doesn’t like the idea.
Cromwell has on his desk an inventory of Barton’s goods. It is not much. He makes sure she has the fee for the hangman. “If she cannot pay her way at the last, she may suffer longer than she needs. She had imagined how long it takes to burn, but not how long it takes to choke at the end of a rope. In England there is no mercy for the poor. You pay for everything, even a broken neck.”